The zeal of the converted comes sometimes from an overwhelming feeling that they have a good thing. These nice and generous people then earnestly want to share that good thing with everyone they know.
Or, it might be a process of rationalizing the decision they have made. If lots of people jump on the bandwagon with them then they must have been right.
And never mind that you can get a thoroughly decent ViewSonic 1600x1200 19" lcd for around $650, or 2953 pixels per dollar. But still a good 19" CRT for half that price wins unless you're on a tight energy/heat/space budget. Or if you just want the stylishness of an LCD.
We wanted people who would represent the Administration positively
Except that it's not about the Administration, it's supposed to be about representing the United States (and our telecommunications industry, in this case).
They may also need to be reminded that the President is supposed to represent US and we are not his loyal subjects.
It means we're going to have to lean to program in parallel. We're going to have to parallelize our data processing and we're going to have to learn synchronization and locking methods.
This is nothing new. The decreasing returns and impending limits of single threaded processing has been upcoming for a long time now.
I'm a slashdotting technophile as much as anyone else here, but I can't at this time support the use of voting machines.
It costs about 10 times as much to cost a vote by machine compared to hand counting. We pay an unreasonable premium for election night returns. We could have every vote counted by three separate people and get more trustworthy results the next day. Who do you trust? Do you trust the machine manufacturers or your neighbors in your precincts?
If traditional big news media is the "Cathedral" then blog/community sites are the "Bazaar". Does that fit better than the phrase "Open Source Journalism"?
It's not like source code. There is not so much of the behavior of "submitting a patch" to some news story. Everyone just posts up some content or comment (or both in one).
Anyway, the "correct" term will doubtlessly fall to the "hip" term if they don't happen to be the same.
Ok, but 6-10 foot would be a much more interesting number. I certainly hope it can be focused down to a reasonable size with reasonable brightness at that range. I don't want Frank's 200" TV at 10 feet.
Microsoft should pull a "Copeland", kill Longhorn, "acquire" a competitive OS company, and come out with Superior OS (secretly the formerly competing OS) with a Windows compatibility layer.
They'll have to try that with BeOS or OS/2, 'cuz Linux and Wine are already there.
Can't redirect streams after they've been created.
I want to run `command`, maybe interact with it, see that it's running, ctrl-Z suspend it, and then `bg > command.log`.
`nice` for network and disk bandwidth
Imagine something like `netnice -5 httpd` or `disknice -10 postmaster` to make your web or database servers be more polite. You could give priority to your sshd and make sure you can always log in.
fix the termcap anarchy Why is it that NN years after the invention of terminals we still can't get them all talking properly? Sure, you can pretty much always fall back on vt102, but still...
I think the next great leap will come from parallelism.
If you want better compute-per-watt, there are plenty of processors better than a monolithic x86 or x86-64 CPU; better even than POWER or PPC.
The trick is tying them together efficiently. That will be solved either by efficient interconnect or economies of scale that simply overwhelm the inefficiency with vasly superior resources. This is already happening in supercomputing and there's a long tradition of features of supercomputing making their way down to the lower teirs.
Supercomputers ran up against a wall of single CPU performance and went parallel. PCs will run up against a wall of single CPU economy when you can get four half-performance CPUs for the price of one full-performance CPU, --- and the OS and hardware makers are there to take advantage of that.
Since the only OS a reasonable/. user would even consider is multiprocessor capable, I think we're ready for this shift.
I wrote a little calculator to help analyze the economies of voting machines. One of the problems of the recent election was that there weren't enough voting machines to go around, and cost may have played a factor. I heard from my country clerk that new HAVA complaiant DRE voting machines were often costing about $4000 each. Even if you estimate that they could be built for as little as $500, they're not economical. I combined the recent Ohio statistic of 100-200 votes per machine per election to arrive at the following conclusions.
A machine must last at least 7.5 elections to break even vs. hand counted ballots and possibly as many as 685.714285714286.
Human cost per ballot counted $0.0583333333333333-$0.333333333333333. Machine cost per ballot counted (over 10 elections) $0.25-$4.
No compromises, no strategies, no votes thrown away, no spoilers.
Vote your conscience about all of the choices. If you don't get your favorite you might still get your second or third choice.
You can vote the bums out, even your own bums, safely. If I don't like the crufty incumbent in my own party I can vote to prefer someone else, but still vote to keep my crufty incumbent over the alternative from the opposition.
It's perfectly natural to have regulations to ensure a just economy; Laws against fraud, slander, libel, etc.
It's definitely a good thing to keep shadowy monied players from buying an election to keep their political machine churning.
Now the trick is to do these things without burying the system that is basically good but needs guidance.
Aside from direct person-to-person verbal (and non-verbal) communication, every form of communication requires an economic transaction to buy pen and paper, buy email or web bandwidth, print flyers or newspapers, etc. Campaign finance laws don't sweat the small stuff, so I don't think I have to worry about how much I spend on my web site (<$100/mo) that happens to express my personal political views and voting recommendations.
This may also be a case where Freedom trumps Privacy. Privacy means other people don't have to know what you do; Freedom means you're allowed to do what you do even when other people know about it. If we're going to have Freedom of speech, we might have to give up anonymity and admit where the money's coming from and how much it is. What would people think if they knew the money trail for the ad campaign from the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush? Would they be suprised that people X,Y and Z spent $bignum to put that out? Would it affect their appraisal of the message to know who the messenger is?
A lot of this stuff is already out there, to the credit of the campaign finance rules. I think it just needs to be a little more widespread and a little easier to find.
[This message paid for by slashdot. I'm Brian Olson and I endorse this message.]
Ah, IRV and other models have some assumptions. IRV assumes that the first choice is vastly preferred to the second, the second vastly preferred to the third, and so on. Condorcet, Borda, etc assume that it's a pretty even, linear scale and that one choice to the next is not such a large difference.
To get rid of both assumptions you have to vote on a ratings ballot. Rate each candidate on whatever scale and then you can explicitly record how much difference you feel there is between candidates. I suggest a system called Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings as a fair system for counting ratings ballots.
How to spin this when pitching it to Two Two Parties is that it lets you vote the bums out safely. When we have a distasteful incumbent within our own party, we can vote for someone else in our party over them, keep them as second or third choice and safely not elect some looser from the other party.
I have hope. I'm working with my prospective state assembly member to get a change to the California elections code introduced and hopefully passed. I write a bill for him, he gets some notoriety in the assembly, everybody wins. Ah, Democracy.
See also this poll which has some of the options other commenters want, and automatically tallies acording to many systems including Condorcet and IRV.
Slashdot Mirror
The zeal of the converted comes sometimes from an overwhelming feeling that they have a good thing. These nice and generous people then earnestly want to share that good thing with everyone they know.
Or, it might be a process of rationalizing the decision they have made. If lots of people jump on the bandwagon with them then they must have been right.
So now the monitor economy works out to:
And never mind that you can get a thoroughly decent ViewSonic 1600x1200 19" lcd for around $650, or 2953 pixels per dollar. But still a good 19" CRT for half that price wins unless you're on a tight energy/heat/space budget. Or if you just want the stylishness of an LCD.
Except that it's not about the Administration, it's supposed to be about representing the United States (and our telecommunications industry, in this case).
They may also need to be reminded that the President is supposed to represent US and we are not his loyal subjects.
It means we're going to have to lean to program in parallel. We're going to have to parallelize our data processing and we're going to have to learn synchronization and locking methods.
This is nothing new. The decreasing returns and impending limits of single threaded processing has been upcoming for a long time now.
I'm a slashdotting technophile as much as anyone else here, but I can't at this time support the use of voting machines.
It costs about 10 times as much to cost a vote by machine compared to hand counting. We pay an unreasonable premium for election night returns. We could have every vote counted by three separate people and get more trustworthy results the next day. Who do you trust? Do you trust the machine manufacturers or your neighbors in your precincts?
http://bolson.org/cgi-bin/vote_tco
http://bolson.org/ipodchart.html
Compare storage per dollar, storage per ounce, volume, density and other values.
If traditional big news media is the "Cathedral" then blog/community sites are the "Bazaar". Does that fit better than the phrase "Open Source Journalism"?
It's not like source code. There is not so much of the behavior of "submitting a patch" to some news story. Everyone just posts up some content or comment (or both in one).
Anyway, the "correct" term will doubtlessly fall to the "hip" term if they don't happen to be the same.
Ok, but 6-10 foot would be a much more interesting number. I certainly hope it can be focused down to a reasonable size with reasonable brightness at that range. I don't want Frank's 200" TV at 10 feet.
Microsoft should pull a "Copeland", kill Longhorn, "acquire" a competitive OS company, and come out with Superior OS (secretly the formerly competing OS) with a Windows compatibility layer.
They'll have to try that with BeOS or OS/2, 'cuz Linux and Wine are already there.
Can't redirect streams after they've been created.
.
I want to run `command`, maybe interact with it, see that it's running, ctrl-Z suspend it, and then `bg > command.log`
`nice` for network and disk bandwidth
Imagine something like `netnice -5 httpd` or `disknice -10 postmaster` to make your web or database servers be more polite. You could give priority to your sshd and make sure you can always log in.
fix the termcap anarchy
Why is it that NN years after the invention of terminals we still can't get them all talking properly? Sure, you can pretty much always fall back on vt102, but still...
I don't have time to think about what's wrong with UNIX. I'm too busy writing perl scripts to work around the shortcomings.
I think the next great leap will come from parallelism.
/. user would even consider is multiprocessor capable, I think we're ready for this shift.
If you want better compute-per-watt, there are plenty of processors better than a monolithic x86 or x86-64 CPU; better even than POWER or PPC.
The trick is tying them together efficiently. That will be solved either by efficient interconnect or economies of scale that simply overwhelm the inefficiency with vasly superior resources. This is already happening in supercomputing and there's a long tradition of features of supercomputing making their way down to the lower teirs.
Supercomputers ran up against a wall of single CPU performance and went parallel. PCs will run up against a wall of single CPU economy when you can get four half-performance CPUs for the price of one full-performance CPU, --- and the OS and hardware makers are there to take advantage of that.
Since the only OS a reasonable
That statement about Electors doesn't mean common people, but who the State Legislatures appoint to the Electoral College.
And, IANAL, but maybe that "Day" could be interpreted to be the day that votes are counted, whenever they were cast up till that Day.
Justify your celebrity status. What's so great about your life or what you have to say that people should read and take note?
I wrote a little calculator to help analyze the economies of voting machines. One of the problems of the recent election was that there weren't enough voting machines to go around, and cost may have played a factor. I heard from my country clerk that new HAVA complaiant DRE voting machines were often costing about $4000 each. Even if you estimate that they could be built for as little as $500, they're not economical. I combined the recent Ohio statistic of 100-200 votes per machine per election to arrive at the following conclusions.
.
A machine must last at least 7.5 elections to break even vs. hand counted ballots and possibly as many as 685.714285714286
Human cost per ballot counted $0.0583333333333333-$0.333333333333333.
Machine cost per ballot counted (over 10 elections) $0.25-$4.
http://bolson.org/cgi-bin/vote_tco
Yes, the sheer unnecessary waste of it. With a rankings or ratings ballot, there's no need to compromise and there's no vote thrown away.
I'm surprised to see this response. I haven't meet many people who don't want to have a more expressive ballot.
But for all of us non sub-rock dwellers, Strong Bad is just a stupid wast of time.
No compromises, no strategies, no votes thrown away, no spoilers.
Vote your conscience about all of the choices. If you don't get your favorite you might still get your second or third choice.
You can vote the bums out, even your own bums, safely. If I don't like the crufty incumbent in my own party I can vote to prefer someone else, but still vote to keep my crufty incumbent over the alternative from the opposition.
(Yeah, this is kinda my holy cause.
I wish slash had automatic markup like scoop does, then that link would have worked, instead of me waiting two minutes to post a better version.
Because I can write a better law than H.J.RES.109
http://bolson.org/voting/amendment.txt
Because I can write a better law than H.J.RES.109
http://bolson.org/voting/amendment.txt
It's perfectly natural to have regulations to ensure a just economy; Laws against fraud, slander, libel, etc.
It's definitely a good thing to keep shadowy monied players from buying an election to keep their political machine churning.
Now the trick is to do these things without burying the system that is basically good but needs guidance.
Aside from direct person-to-person verbal (and non-verbal) communication, every form of communication requires an economic transaction to buy pen and paper, buy email or web bandwidth, print flyers or newspapers, etc. Campaign finance laws don't sweat the small stuff, so I don't think I have to worry about how much I spend on my web site (<$100/mo) that happens to express my personal political views and voting recommendations.
This may also be a case where Freedom trumps Privacy. Privacy means other people don't have to know what you do; Freedom means you're allowed to do what you do even when other people know about it. If we're going to have Freedom of speech, we might have to give up anonymity and admit where the money's coming from and how much it is. What would people think if they knew the money trail for the ad campaign from the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush? Would they be suprised that people X,Y and Z spent $bignum to put that out? Would it affect their appraisal of the message to know who the messenger is?
A lot of this stuff is already out there, to the credit of the campaign finance rules. I think it just needs to be a little more widespread and a little easier to find.
[This message paid for by slashdot. I'm Brian Olson and I endorse this message.]
Ah, IRV and other models have some assumptions. IRV assumes that the first choice is vastly preferred to the second, the second vastly preferred to the third, and so on. Condorcet, Borda, etc assume that it's a pretty even, linear scale and that one choice to the next is not such a large difference.
To get rid of both assumptions you have to vote on a ratings ballot. Rate each candidate on whatever scale and then you can explicitly record how much difference you feel there is between candidates. I suggest a system called Instant Runoff Normalized Ratings as a fair system for counting ratings ballots.
How to spin this when pitching it to Two Two Parties is that it lets you vote the bums out safely. When we have a distasteful incumbent within our own party, we can vote for someone else in our party over them, keep them as second or third choice and safely not elect some looser from the other party.
I have hope. I'm working with my prospective state assembly member to get a change to the California elections code introduced and hopefully passed. I write a bill for him, he gets some notoriety in the assembly, everybody wins. Ah, Democracy.
See also this poll which has some of the options other commenters want, and automatically tallies acording to many systems including Condorcet and IRV.